The best an Intel Atom-powered tablet can be, at least until later this year.

Any tablet based on Intel's Clover Trail Atom platform is going to have the same strengths and weaknesses. They'll run all of your Windows desktop applications in a thin, light, and power-efficient package, but they only really run them well if said applications are relatively lightweight. This is simply the cost of using a 1.8GHz dual-core Atom CPU, 2GB of memory, and a slower storage interface rather than the full-blown Ultrabook guts of a tablet like Acer's Iconia W700. If you can look past those issues (as well as lackluster graphics performance), Clover Trail enables full Windows 8 tablets that aren't hampered by an inability to run third-party desktop applications.

The insides of Lenovo's ThinkPad Tablet 2 are largely identical to those of the Acer Iconia W510 we reviewed recently. They share the same processor, amount and type of RAM, and storage interface. What Lenovo's Clover Trail tablet brings to the table is the ThinkPad name, which many PC buyers still swear by. Lenovo's entry packs most of the ThinkPad line's virtues into a tablet-sized package, which makes it compelling if you can get past Clover Trail's performance.

The ThinkPad lineup is known for having good build quality, and that's what the ThinkPad Tablet 2 brings to the table. The bulk of the tablet's casing is still made of plastic, but it's the same sturdy plastic that ThinkPad laptops use. The plastic has a slightly soft feel, similar (but not quite the same as) the rubbery coating used on the lids of the laptop ThinkPads. The Tablet 2 is to the iPad as ThinkPad laptops are to MacBooks—Lenovo favors plastic to metal, but their devices don't feel cheap and they're nice to use.

Looking at the back of the tablet, you can see that its edges aren't quite uniform. The top, bottom, and left edges are sloped, while the right edge is rounded. This makes the tablet more pleasant to hold in one's left hand, but more importantly provides a rounded compartment in which to hide the tablet's digitizer pen. The front of the tablet is made similarly asymmetrical by the pen receptacle and the bezel is narrower on the left side than the right.

Speaking of screens, the ThinkPad Tablet 2's 1366×768 IPS display is definitely good, though its pixel density can't compare with that of tablets like the Nexus 10 or full-sized iPad. As you'd expect from an IPS panel, the colors are bright and the viewing angles are good, though the screen does take on a slightly bluish cast when viewed from certain angles. The biggest problem if you're used to a high-density phone or tablet screen might be that the text is slightly fuzzy by comparison, but it doesn't really hurt the tablet's usability.

At 1.25 pounds, the Wi-Fi-only base model is slightly lighter than the full-size iPads, though adding the pen, digitizer, and cellular connectivity options increases this to 1.3 pounds. As with any widescreen tablet, using it one-handed for extended periods is a bit uncomfortable, but the weight is in line with other tablets of this size. It feels good in two hands and carrying it around in a bag is no problem.

Enlarge/ The top, bottom, and right (if you're looking at the front of the tablet) edges have a sharp taper, while the left edge is rounded. The rounded edge is a bit more pleasant to hold, and also stores the digitizer pen.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The Tablet 2 has a physical Windows button rather than a capacitive one.

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Enlarge/ The Tablet 2 stacked on top of a fourth-generation iPad. The tablet has a micro USB port for charging on its left side, as well as a full-size USB 2.0 port for accessories. The full-size USB port is hidden under a small flap.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ On the top of the tablet, you'll find its power button and a compartment for a SIM and microSD card. Also note the red circle—that's the top of the pen.

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Enlarge/ On the right is a headphone jack, volume buttons, and a screen orientation lock button.

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Enlarge/ The bottom of the tablet houses the mini HDMI port and dock connector.

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The Tablet 2 has two small stereo speakers that sound like you'd expect tablet speakers to sound: serviceable but tinny. Finally, the tablet includes both front- and rear-facing cameras. The 2MP front shooter is acceptable for video chatting but is pretty grainy in low-light, a common complaint with these webcams. The 8MP rear shooter is acceptable in cases where the Tablet 2 is the proverbial "camera you have with you" but most modern smartphones and point-and-shoots are going to give you superior image quality.

Enlarge/ The ThinkPad Tablet 2's camera takes pictures with passable detail and color, for a tablet.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ A picture taken in similar lighting with the fourth-generation iPad is a bit brighter and crisper.

I'm totally gonna get a couple of these as soon as used ones drop to around $70 on Ebay; just like the three ThinkPads my family has worn out. You just can't beat a used ThinkPad for a knock-around, who-cares-if-I-break-it laptop.

I'm commenting on this since ages, but: Would it be possible to use a letter, flyer or similar thing to compare tablet cameras instead of some desk decoration?

Because yes, nobody uses such a camera for taking casual photos, but especially in a business context these things are very useful for "scanning" printed things (or whiteboards or product labels) and you totally can't judge the necessary auto-focus quality and sharpness from such comparisons. Many cheaper cameras are even lacking auto-focus and can't focus on a label or letter close enough to the lens at all. Pretty colors don't help you very much then if you can't actually take photos of anything closer than three or four feet, making the only thing such a camera is really useful for plainly impossible.

Intel needs to stop strangling their Atom processors with an artificial limit on resolution. Until then, none of these larger tablets running Atom processors will succeed.

How is this not mentioned in the "Good, Bad, Ugly" section?

edit -- "1366×768 IPS display is a good match for the screen size, though it has a low pixel density compared to competing iOS and Android tablets" was added to the "good" section. Thanks, Andrew, I guess?

I don't agree with the camera assessment. Now I was not in that room when the picture was taken, but it would appear the Lenovo's sensor captured more accurate reds, and greys in particular. It also kept more details in the shadows. That said, It completely failed to capture any cats.

It has been my experience that whatever Apple uses for sensors tends to over expose everything, and wash out shadows. Seemingly to get more "pop" in the pictures they take.

I can't really wrap my head around that price - $750 for what essentially is a touch netbook? No thanks. If they can't work on getting that price down to a sub $400 amount, are people going to be buying these?

1024x768 on a 7.9" screen is 163 ppi, 1366x768 on 10.1" is 155 ppi, which is pretty much the same density. Both are far from perfect but for actually getting things done both are just fine (and this density is much better than what most computer displays can offer anyway).

I don't know, to be honest as long as it's not £100 tablet quality I'll tend to take a lower resolution happily if it gives me longer battery life as a knock-on. The one thing I'd have liked in this review is an assessment of how well the pen held up for handwriting and drawing, I've ordered one of these as a halfway house between a Surface RT and a Surface Pro so comparing the pen to the Pro would be useful.

For those barfing at the screen resolution, I blame Windows for this and not Lenovo. Windows8 does not scale applications well outside of Metro. If you go for a really high resolution you are going to end up with a bunch of elements that are unusable even with a pen. Yes, I know that there is the 125% scaling, etc, but my experience has been that a lot of apps don't support this, or they scale so badly that text gets truncated or buttons don't work. Better scaling please MS.

But can you run your legacy Windows programs on an iPad? Didn't think so.

Can you run your iOS apps on a Windows tablet?

(I think Windows legacy support is getting to be a bit over-rated. Yes, there are some app- I mean, programs that are irreplaceable, but set aside an old Thinkpad for those and live forever. The flip side of the coin is that Windows legacy code is also responsible for Microsoft falling so far behind in the mobile world.)

You forgot to mention enterprise level encryption. I couldn't tell you if you could make an iPad or Android tablet FIPS compliant, but the ThinkPad Tablet 2 and HP ElitePad can right out of the box. Ditto on management via group policies as well as the ability to run full versions of Microsoft Office. I think those are all pluses that weren't mentioned.

Anyone try ready boost on an atom device? Yes it would require a flash drive in the USB port, but it's got to be better than suffering with the woeful 2GB of RAM.

Intel needs to stop strangling their Atom processors with an artificial limit on resolution. Until then, none of these larger tablets running Atom processors will succeed.

How is this not mentioned in the "Good, Bad, Ugly" section?

Trolling or serious?

For Windows, this resolution actually works out just perfectly if you regularly use Windows desktop applications and/or need to dock your tablet with a large desktop display. Some important Windows desktop apps (such as Photoshop) do not yet support high-DPI displays and thus render unusably small on a 10" 1080p display such as that in the Surface Pro.

In addition, Windows 8 does not yet support desktop scaling on a per-monitor basis, so that if you dock a high-DPI tablet with a desktop display you have to reconfigure your display scaling each time; painful to say the least. This is reportedly being corrected for Windows 8 'Blue', but for now, the 1366x768 display resolution is a benefit since you can run the desktop at 100% on both internal and external displays.

Regardless, 151ppi is roughly 50% greater pixel density than that on a typical laptop display, so it's hardly "pitiful". Text may be slightly less sharp than on a "retina" device, but the majority of users won't notice or care.

If you go for a really high resolution you are going to end up with a bunch of elements that are unusable even with a pen. Yes, I know that there is the 125% scaling, etc, but my experience has been that a lot of apps don't support this, or they scale so badly that text gets truncated or buttons don't work. Better scaling please MS.

While the res on this tablet is indeed a limitation of the chip used, it's true that the fundamental problem lies with MS not coming up with a workable strategy to transition Windows to a high-resolution environment. And a large part of the reason for that lies in the wide variety of legacy APIs used for drawing to the screen, which makes it hard to produce consistent scaling unless MS bites the bullet and wraps them all in another layer. MS has worked hard in the past to make Windows look good at low resolutions, but they need to accept that this lies in the past, and efforts to set the bar even lower are just going to make things harder for them in the long term.

I know I've kind of beaten this horse to death in other comments, but am I the only one who feels that his Internet browsing habits alone are too much for a tablet like that? Heck, right now my light office usage is eating 2.5 GB of RAM. Granted, I got insane amounts of RAM (for a laptop) and Windows seems to adjust itself somewhat to the amount of RAM you have installed, but still 2 GB seems rather measly to me. 4 GB I could live with though, even with a 1.86 GHz atom CPU since 4 GB and an older mobile Core 2 Duo does just fine for light work.

The display does have a low PPI, but I do agree that at 10.1", 1366x768 isn't that bad, it would have been nice to have something a tad higher like 1600x900 though.

I'm still going to wait for the Helix though, this feels like something that is not quite a tablet (in the Android and iOS sense) and not quite a laptop. The Helix addresses most things I find disappointing on this tablet: fixed angle dock, low res display and more RAM. I know I said 768p was fine on 10.1" and it is, but if I can go for something higher, I will. It's a lot more expensive and not out yet though.

It does seem like a device my parents could use and one that would survive my father. Also, their eyesight isn't what it used to be and 1600x900 on 14.1" is already hard on their eyes so lower res is actually a plus for them. Being the techie in the family means I'm always getting calls when it's time for relatives to buy tech.

Seems like the real competitor to this is the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.

They both do pen input and I'm sure I can find myself a keyboard that will dock with the Galaxy Note 10.1.

While it is true that they do not run the same set of applications, I wonder what "Real Native Windows Applications" I will be able to run on a netbook class processor. Given the slight price difference, I wonder which one users will go towards.

You turned on the overhead desklamp for the "brighter" iPad photo. That's pretty clear from the difference with the shadows. The purple robot from MST3K ..... you can see how the position of the shadow on the wall changed with the light source change. Same with the lanyards draped over the lamp.... the shadow changed. The color quality is completely different too...... which leads me to believe the first photo was taken with natural room lighting and the second was natural lighting plus the desk lamp. Also, the shadow angle changed with the white thing on the wall at the top of the photo.

You're being misleading Mr. Cunningham.......

Edit: Take a look at the photos again before downrating me. Be honest with yourself and actually look.

These devices definitely fill a niche in the enterprise side. All the benefits of a full-blown Windows and Office deployment, but in a tablet. I hesitate at purchasing this generation of Lenovo tablet due to the limited processing power, but the form factor is needed in the enterprise.

Someone earlier snickered about 'legacy Windows applications' - well, in business, this is very often necessary. Sure, iPads are fantastic in many areas, including specific areas in business (such as customer interaction), but there are many in which they simply won't do the job for a business user in an enterprise environment that needs network drives, group policy enforcement, business apps designed for Windows, AND portability.

The X200 series tablets are great, but they are too heavy and bulky for true portability. This platform looks promising.

Faak the tablet - I want that keyboard! Small but with large enough keys with good travel, integrated trackpoint (!!!!!!) and Bluetooth? Sign me up. Would use it with all my computers: laptops, desktops and tablet, carry it around wherever I go and call it "my dear" (when the wife is not around).

Intel needs to stop strangling their Atom processors with an artificial limit on resolution. Until then, none of these larger tablets running Atom processors will succeed.

How is this not mentioned in the "Good, Bad, Ugly" section?

I see that 13 people have never used a 1366 tablet? Or have bad eyes and can't tell the difference? Or don't care?

Pitiful is exactly the right word to describe a screen of this size with this low a resolution. You can practically walk on those pixels they are that big. Reading text on this causes a lot of eye strain.

You turned on the overhead desklamp for the "brighter" iPad photo. That's pretty clear from the difference with the shadows. The purple robot from MST3K ..... you can see how the position of the shadow on the wall changed with the light source change. Same with the lanyards draped over the lamp.... the shadow changed. The color quality is completely different too...... which leads me to believe the first photo was taken with natural room lighting and the second was natural lighting plus the desk lamp. Also, the shadow angle changed with the white thing on the wall at the top of the photo.

You're being misleading Mr. Cunningham.......

Edit: Take a look at the photos again before downrating me. Be honest with yourself and actually look.

These pictures were taken on different days, but under the same lighting conditions (clear sky outside, overhead light and desk lamp both turned on). The iPad just has a way warmer default white balance than the ThinkPad Tablet 2, which is why that photo has a more yellowish cast to it.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.